My Roots of Vulnerability

It took me a while to write this one…

In this blog, I’ve written about defiance, perseverance, rage, and the transformation of despair—all essential to grapple with in the process of creating community, of becoming whole.

But over the past couple of months, I’ve been contemplating something a bit more fundamental: vulnerability.

Not just as a strategy for achievement, but as a way of life. A kind of tonic that lets us live with a little more honesty, even if it risks undoing the stories we tell ourselves to feel safe. Even if it challenges the narratives that reassure us we’re in control.

Society discourages vulnerability with obvious logic. If we let ourselves feel too much, every time we saw someone hungry on the street, we’d have to stop. We’d have to really care.

Vulnerability doesn’t get you far in a world built on detachment. It’s easier to be composed, efficient, polite. Cool. Keeping your heart out of reach prevents it from breaking. Which seems for the best—it’s hard to be productive with a broken heart.

But what would happen if we let our hearts break?

I tried to write this post many times.

Since this is also a gardening blog, I started with some clever analogies about what makes my plants vulnerable—how they have to open themselves up, depend on others, stay rooted for better or for worse, trust time, surrender to cycles. How the very things that make them vulnerable are also what help them grow.

But that’s abstraction. And abstractions dodge vulnerability.

So I tried again. I wrote about what it took to plant my pumpkins on borrowed land, knowing they could be destroyed at any time. Or to show up in front of The Patch’s neighbors, knowing I could be admonished for altering their backyard. I wrote about how I felt after my watermelon plants got mowed again—and how I kept tending the plot anyway.

But those were still easy stories to tell. Those were about vulnerability used for a purpose—not vulnerability for its own sake.

What I want to write about is vulnerability at its genesis, its most authentic root. The kind with no clear reward. The kind I feel when I open my heart to a starry night and dare to wonder. To feel small.

So I start with the stars.

I’ve realized, lately, how rarely I’ve looked up at them since being back in the States.

I look up often when I travel. The stars connect me. Wherever I am, they remind me of my past selves: different ages, different places, but the same stars. They scatter me across time and space but, like a constellation, connect me into something more complete.

One of my earliest, most powerful lessons in vulnerability happened in New Haven, with a friend I used to walk around with, looking up at the stars.

Beneath the stars, we would break ourselves open.

I came to New Haven as a student at Yale. Yale was the castle in the middle of the city—a castle built of stone, fortified by exclusivity and impenetrability.

It had iron gates that kept everyone without proper access firmly out. And in case those gates gave out, Yale had its own private security force—ever-present, swarming.

Surrounding this castle was a lot of ‘poor’ people. The kind of community that’s rooted, been there for generations. Predominantly Black communities that have been there since the founding of Yale itself.

In the middle of their own city, the impression among many New Havenites was they weren’t welcome at Yale—unless they were serving us.

This power imbalance was completely normalized. But for me, from the start, the whole thing felt unsettling. I’ve always had a problem carrying power I thought was unearned. And power based on skin color, ownership, or the economic circumstances of birth felt like unearned power.

So I set out to understand the gap. To understand the city. America itself.

My time there could be a whole book. I had magical experiences, both inside Yale and out, and most importantly, I made some good friends: some from Yale, and others from the city.

One of those friends was a man I met during my sophomore year. I’ll call him Khalil.

A friend from Yale and I were exploring the rap music scene in New Haven when we met Khalil. He was part of the leadership of one of the city’s biggest record labels-slash-gangs. He was the number two guy, responsible for bankrolling the whole operation: studio time, club performances, hype, promotion. To do that, he sold marijuana. A lot of it.

We’d initially met to talk about music, but Khalil drew me in from the start. He was funny and witty. Charismatic. And underneath that, there was a seriousness—that kind you get by having really lived.

I fell in love.

I didn’t mean to. It happened quietly at first, and then all at once. Even with our different backgrounds, from worlds not meant to meet, I didn’t feel like a puzzle to be solved. I felt understood. It was easy being around him.

At night, we’d walk around Yale’s campus, sipping on peach Ciroc. We talked. I shared my world, and he shared his.

We talked about love.

“I’ve learned to stop looking for it,” Khalil said. “You just have to let it find you.”

One night, we were at Khalil’s house. He had to take care of something inside, and I was waiting on the front porch with three of his friends.

I should pause here to say—people from the city were naturally suspicious of “Yalies.” Entitled, rude, enigmatic, didn’t even know how to cross the streets—that was the general gist. But among New Haven’s poorest neighborhoods, very few actually knew a Yalie intimately.

Khalil’s friends, as it turned out, were helping him deal. I’m a bit of an engineer at heart, and after a few honest questions, they started mapping out the city for me—breaking down how drug territory worked in New Haven. I was riveted, of course.

Khalil came outside mid-conversation. He was livid.

“Do you even know her?!” he shouted. “She could be anyone—and you’re just here telling her everything!”

Caught off guard, realizing themselves what they had just done, they backed down, muttering that they had trusted me because I was his friend.

Later, Khalil’s cousin would tell me people were so willing to talk to me because they could tell my questions were honest. I just wanted to understand them. And in turn, they wanted to understand me.

That was when I realized: my openness could carry consequences—not just for me, but for others.

Khalil and I grew closer. We shared unforgettable moments of warmth. Walking side by side, our hands brushing together, a slight touch on the shoulder when one of us had something to say. My favorite was the night I acted a bit more tipsy than I was and ‘accidentally’ tripped and stumbled back into him. He caught me from behind and held me. Together we looked up at the stars.

It felt like we had our own world—not one divided by Yalies and Townies, haves and have-nots, but a rocket ship of our own, drifting somewhere higher, where only souls mattered.

It wasn’t the kind of love that takes years to build, but it was ours. Connection—open, honest, vulnerable.

And also fragile. The thought of me, a Yale student, being with someone from the ‘hood,’ without some prestigious career path or pedigree, didn’t seem like a tenable option. Not then.

I had opened my heart and given myself this beautiful gift of love. And now, that very gift felt like it might undo me.

“I feel a little sorry for you,” he told me once. “I don’t know if you’ll ever get to be with who you truly want to be with.”

So of course, I pulled my punches. Emotionally. How could I bear to go all in?

Instead, I scattered myself. Turned to people who could give me attention when I wanted Khalil’s, but didn’t want to reach out to him. One of those people—I’ll call him Darren.

Darren had meant something to me once, but by then, romantically, not much anymore. But we remained friends and so, one night he showed up at my dorm—it was the anniversary of his brother’s death—and he wanted my attention. I wouldn’t give it. I was supposed to be meeting Khalil.

Khalil arrived while Darren was still there. Darren wouldn’t leave. They argued. He dug in. Eventually, I got him to go.

Later, in Khalil’s car, it was quiet.

He said his hand had been resting on his pocket knife. Said if Darren had moved any closer, he might’ve had to act.

I laughed it off—told him Darren wasn’t like that. Just belligerent sometimes.

Khalil didn’t laugh. He just looked at me like I didn’t get it. Like I’d put him in a position that was dangerous.

And I had.

Whether I’d meant to or not, I’d put him in the kind of danger that could’ve changed everything—not just for him, but for Darren, and for me. And I couldn’t yet see it.

Khalil distanced himself after that. No matter what I said or how I tried to reach him—nothing.

I had lost my light in the night. The one who made me feel so seen. My bridge between Yale’s gated world and something a bit more human. My friend.

Just like that—gone.

That was the first time in my adult life I felt the cost of having someone vanish without saying goodbye. Of being left.

But that wasn’t even the hardest part.

Opening up to Khalil hadn’t taken much. I’ve never struggled to run toward something that felt good, to swim deep into the unknown when I trust the current.

What took vulnerability was facing the harm I’d caused.

I hurt someone who mattered. By not being honest with Khalil—or with Darren—I’d created chaos. I’d let fear drive me, and it spun all of us out of control.

I had done the best I could. I was immature and inexperienced. I knew that—and still, it didn’t matter. I was responsible for the mess I’d made.

And admitting that—looking inside myself in that moment and fully recognizing what was there, what I’d done—that took real vulnerability.

But eventually, I accepted it. I grew. I expanded my capacity for courage. I learned to hold the joy of what we had alongside the pain it left behind, without needing to push either one away.

I tapped into a root of vulnerability: sitting with myself fully, taking responsibility for everything I was—and everything I was not—and growing from there.

Khalil and I still talk today. It’s different from what we had. Unfinished, but real. A consequence of daring to stay open.

The true reward though, I’ve come to think, isn’t in the outcome, but in the growth. I like to believe that every time I have the courage to be vulnerable—to face myself fully, honestly, unflinchingly—I expand my capacity to carry my own truth.

To live life on my own terms. To know I can bare my soul in public, and still survive.

And maybe, when the time comes for radical solutions—when I have to stand chest out, ten toes down, when no one else agrees or understands—I’ll be ready.

That’s my hope, anyway.